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It’s no secret that I have been getting very active with photography. In fact, it’s been nearly an obsession as I’ve begun maintaining a photoblog of all my best work. I’ve even written about going and getting your first Digital SLR camera, mainly because SLR photography is becoming very accessible and web geeks love sharing their photos.

Obviously, when learning about your camera and the various techniques, you’ll find people who shoot in such a way that grabs your attention and tugs your emotions. For me, I’ve had several photographic geniuses who have influenced my own style. I try to learn as much as I can from these people and have been known to ask questions.

Thomas Hawk

Thomas Hawk is one of my favorite photographers ever. His goal is to publish one million photos online before he dies. He published his 20,000th the other day. Thomas has a wide diversity of “types” of photos, however most of his stuff tends to experiment richly with color, motion, low light and patterns. And mostly in San Francisco, where he lives. For more of Thomas’ photography, check out his Flickr and Zooomr.

Danny Hammontree

Danny is a relatively new photographer to me. His style is distinct. Mainly he shoots black and white photography and his niche is protest/social injustice. Therefore, he likes to capture rallies and protests, as well as tell stories of societal failings. Check Dannys Flickr stream for more of his work.

Brian Solis

Brian is one of my good friends and has taken some of my favorite photos of me. That is mainly because Brian excels at capturing people. Typically, people who are socializing and having fun. He tends to shoot a lot of photography at web networking events. For more of Brian’s work, check out his Flickr stream.

Brian Solis participated in last November’s PR Roundtable here at Technosailor. Today, I caught up with him to revisit the topic and determine if any progress has been made in PR/Blogger relations and how bloggers can position themselves strategically to work with PR people.

Good friend of mine and sometimes-columnist here at Technosailor, Geoff Livingston, is celebrating the launch of Now is Gone, the book he’s been working on for quite some time (it also has a blog associated with it as any good new media book does). Now is Gone is described as a “Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs” based on his own knowledge and experience running a social media-oriented PR firm.

So, Geoff is a friend of mine but I told him I’d give him an honest review of this book, and honest review I will do. Overall, the book is brilliant. I’m glad this is not “yet another book on blogging”. It doesn’t provide a how to. It doesn’t provide options for choosing your platform or describe how to subscribe to RSS.

It’s obvious that this book was written mostly for executives. This is not a bad thing as Executives are the ones steering companies and the reality is that if companies don’t embrace social media, they will be left behind. It is presented in a very philosophical way, describing the challenges that companies face today when it comes to the social media landscape, brand management and public relations. The simple message is, “Hey guys, you need to get what is going on today and you need to do it fast because Now is Gone”.

The book starts with an intro from Brian Solis who you may remember was a member of the PR Roundtable discussion hosted here in November, 2007. I love Brian, but the foreword was too lengthy and off-putting. As a reader, I wanted to get into the meat of the book and it seemed to take awhile to get to that point.

Geoff makes some common sense analogies between social media mirroring real life. It stood out to me that people do not like to be controlled but they will allow themselves to be influenced – as long as you don’t try to control them! His 5 steps to the basis of an effective social media message could probably be broken out further, but were effective for the book:

Giving Up Control of the Message

Participating in a Community

Is Your Community Social Media Savvy?

Dedicating the Resources

Ethics and Transparency

This book as a whole is a slam dunk, effectively communicating a message that is very much needed and, is very timely at a time where companies are embarrassing themselves more than ever in their engagement with social media. In that way, this book could not be more timely.

I would suggest for the next book, however, (There will be another one, right Geoff? :) ) that fewer callouts be used. It seems that call outs were half the book and if that was the intention, you might as well have made them part of the book. :) That’s a minor point though.

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Aaron Brazell

My name is Aaron Brazell and I am the author of the WordPress Bible. I have been building WordPress solutions for over ten years for clients large and small. I have also been a core contributor. I live in Baltimore with my dog, though I (and he) claims Austin as home.